BludgerTrack: 50.1-49.9 to Coalition

A slight lead in Nielsen, together with the fading effect of weak results a few weeks back, finds the Coalition squeaking ahead on two-party preferred for the first time this year.

This week’s lead to the Coalition in Nielsen, together with a particularly bad result for Labor from Essential, has given the Coalition a two-party lead in the weekly BludgerTrack poll aggregate for the first time this year, albeit by the barest of margins. This represents a considerable move on last week’s result, which equally reflects the fading effect of Labor’s 54-46 and 53-47 leads in Newspoll and ReachTEL three to four weeks ago. With the electoral terrain favouring the Coalition, a fairly comfortable majority is recorded on the seat projection, with four coming off the Labor gains from Queensland since last week, together with two each from New South Wales and Victoria and one each from Western Australia and Tasmania. A new set of leadership figures is provided by Nielsen, which maintains the slowly narrowing trajectory on preferred prime minister and slightly lifts both leaders on net satisfaction.

Seems about right to me. The economy is tracking along not too badly. The expected downturn in manufacturing and mining won’t take effect for another year or two, not will any large cuts in Federal outlays that might occur in the forthcoming budget. The boats are stopped for now.

On the key indicators that matter to swinging voters – as opposed to the average PBer or the people who demonstrated last weekend – the government is going ok so far. But one senses a quiet before the storm. This is a government in which the leadership group is committed to a radical reform agenda which – as we have seen with SPC and will see again – is controversial even within the Coalition. Even the leadership group is divided in some key respects because they come at problems in very different ways: eg, Abbott and Hockey are both small government people, but for radically different reasons.

It’s going to be an interesting, make or break time ahead over the next 12 months. This lot seem to be determined to go in much harder than Howard in many areas. Yet Howard – who had far more of a mandate for reform – all but brought himself undone between 1996 and 1998. Australian voters have consistently demonstrated that they favour pragmatism over idealism. The Abbott Government is, by all appearances, one that is strongly motivated by idealism.m

Can they take the public with them? I very much doubt it, but we’ll find out over the next 12 months or so.

I’d say the regime doesn’t have the Australian public with them so at this stage, it
It can’t take the public anywhere. As things stand it has managed, through lots of shouting with a really powerful PA, to make it impossible for the last regime to explain itself and therefore to persuade enough of the public that that regime was hopeless for them to sigh deeply and agree that if they’ll just shut up they can have a turn at being in charge, but many aren’t sure that it was a good idea and some are very resentful, as #marchinmarch showed.

Given that the PA was all they had their chances of taking them anywhere new and better than the last lot would seem poor.

The government is still in the ‘honeymoon’ period (not that they’re getting much of one) where voters are feeling lenient towards their errors – not wanting to admit they made a mistake by voting them in, and also recognising (fairly enough) that young governments do make mistakes.

And the ‘big’ negative news of the last few months – Holden, SPC, Toyota etc – are out of the headlines and fading from memory. They’re also announcements at the moment – things which will impact on job figures etc down the track when they actually happen, but not affecting even those who will lose their jobs noticeably yet.

The various Budget nasties are only rumours at the moment, and most voters know that there are rumours of nastiness before every Budget, many of which don’t turn into anything real at all.

One way or another, the government hasn’t really done anything yet — which is condemnation in itself, but again, it’s too early for that to impact.

All of which means that to be neck and neck at this stage of the race is actually quite remarkable for the government, and not in a good way.

Morning all. Late counting yesterday seems to confirm the SA result so well done Jay Weatherall on a great campaign and result that I readily admit I did not expect. My only hope is that Tony Abbott does not punish SA too harshly for the crime of voting Labor.

The deregulation of the financial planning industry again is sickening. I would call them Wobbeygongs – bottom feeding sharks. They are not all criminals, but it is at best an ethics free zone. If you cared about professional reputation, you would not be a financial planner in the first place.

Issues like financial planning – average people getting fleeced of much of their life savings over time – are IMO actually more important now in terms of social justice than many of Labor’s traditional focuses. There is great potential for Labor to regain relevance by fighting this. Certainly the. Libs won’t. Nor will the FPs and their managers ever vote Labor.

the next federal ALP government should consider a wide ranging Royal Commission into the revolving door between John Howard’s ex-staff, the NSW Liberal Party, lobbyists, property developers and sundry rent seekers.

An example term of reference:

How did John Howard’s former departmental head Max Moore Wilton, as head of Sydney Airport, manage to have the former government owned company operate for 10 years paying no tax?

The hearing was told that Sydney Water’s then chief executive Dr Kerry Schott and senior executive Ron Quill were seen by AWH as an impediment. According to Phillip Costa, then a Labor minister, Eddie Obeid Sr lobbied hard for Schott’s removal: “… you need to sack the bitch.”
As per article posted last night. I am very curious to know who made the false complaint

Watson asserted the ICAC knew the identity (yet to be revealed) of the anonymous complainant to the ICAC that Schott and Quill were themselves corrupt in their relationship with the multi-national Veolia.

"The allegations of corruption made against Dr Kerry Schott and Mr Ron Quill were thoroughly investigated and shown to be absolutely false," Watson said.

Re Meher Baba @2: Can they take the public with them? I very much doubt it, but we’ll find out over the next 12 months or so.

Tony is not a consensue builder like Hawke and, to a lesser extent, Howard. He’s not going to win any hearts or minds.

As Fran, says, The Governments allies largely control the flow of information and hence the message, helping to keep those who changed from Labor to Coalition from drifting back, unless the news becomes so bad for the Government that it can’t be hidden or spun away.

Abbott’s other tactic is wedge politics, to hive numbers off the Opposition here and there, normally among disengaged Labor voters, to build on the Coalition’s core support of business and traditional conservatives. That’s the whole purpose of the Coalition’s management of the ‘boats’ issue, for example. The Batts and Unions Royal Commissions are part wedge politics and part controlling the message by burying or crowding out other debates and bad news. No doubt other wedges will be used along the way.

Elder on Sinodinos. Not sure i agree with all of Elder’s observations on this one

Arthur Sinodinos was a well-regarded Treasury official who went to work for John Howard when nobody in Canberra wanted to know him. When Howard's luck changed, so did Sinodinos'. He spent the early part of Howard's Prime Ministership with his eyes on policy while fixers and spivs frittered away the third-biggest electoral margin in history.

Labor need to emphasis the fact that sinodinos was in charge of changes to financial planning for the benefit of the spivs. How did Abbott allow someone who has a question mark against his name re shonky conduct re AWH. Also he was a director of so many companies that he failed to disclose. Goodness me the stench…..

There’s a it of talk going around about how Arthur did all these completely innocent things that some “frothing” people (Tony Wright’s word) allege weren’t so innocent before he was appointed as a minister, or even in parliament, which is true enough.

But that didn’t help Craig Thomson did it?

Come to think of it, most of the juicy allegations (especially the ones ruled to be an abuse of process, and which were dropped by the time the real shooting began in Ashby’s case) concerned his behaviour before he entered parliament, too.

And it didn’t help Julia Gillard, either, when her career as a young lawyer in the mid-1990s was dragged through the mud, was subjected to endless questioning inside and outside parliament and generally used to besmirch her reputation.

In fact Gillard scored the daily double. Not only do the allegations against her concern her time long ago as a private citizen, they are now about to be investigated via a Royal Commission after she has completely left politics.

Never mind, there’s more.

A lot of chat says that Abbott has been taken by surprise by these allegations. But they were well about before he was appointed. Abbott made him a minister knowing about the allegations. Arthur was an appointed Senator when the first stories started to appear, before the election.

It was obvious at the time that this was going to blow up. Yet the Liberals put Arthur up as a candidate, got him elected and then appointed him to high office.

Surely they must have known that one day the spotlight would turn upon their brave political knight?

If all this sounds familiar, almost a parallel to other cases, it is. Except the other cases involved a few thousand dollars. This one involves millions.

Which is better? To rip off money from the lowest paid unionists in the workforce, or take a naughty taxi ride outside Canberra to buy some wine from a vineyard in Bungendore, or to preside (as Chairmen do – their job is to preside) over the systematic fleecing of millions of dollars from the taxpayers by a tiny company grown mysteriously large overnight, all while getting paid $200,000 to – apparently – do nothing, see nothing, hear nothing and meet no-one?

The ICAC hearing was told on Monday that Senator Sinodinos stood to pocket up to $20 million in shares from a contract between AWH and the Sydney Water Corporation and that he was employed to open doors with the Liberal Party.

In the period that Senator Sinodinos was AWH director, the company gave more than $75,000 to the NSW Liberal Party of which Senator Sinodinos was treasurer.

Abbott and the fibs would have known a great deal about the dodgy conduct of those within the AWH. I believe they thought with a NSW Bof govt and virtually wall to wall fib govts, as well as the Murdoch press, the AFP barracking for them, that nothing would come of it.
I suspect that the false allegations made to the PServants running Sydney water were the catalyst for this whole thing blowing up

I am curious to see if the ICAC investigation into the political donations turn up stuff re the central coast. That could well ensnare the current federal Liberal members for seats such as Robertson and Dobell. It would be delicious irony.

The Labor Party will refund an alledgedly illegal $200,000 donation that was used to fund polling in former prime minister Kevin Rudd's Queensland seat during last year's federal election, according to a report.

The donation was allegedly paid to Labor's Griffith branch bank account by Taiwan developer and former banker Kung Chin Yuan on September 3, The Australian reports.
Labor officials found the transaction during an audit and were advised by lawyers that it breached state electoral laws.

Does anyone know who was responsible for the contract between Sydney Water & AWH, how could it have been so badly drafted that it was open ended with all liability falling on SW.
This dodgy contract appears to be the reason AWH obtained renewed work from State Government & SW.
Was the original contract deliberately stuffed up?

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.